5 ms·

A completely open study. The parents, students and evaluators knew people were getting the actual treatment. No control group and no blinding at all The study

A completely open study. The parents, students and evaluators knew people were getting the actual treatment. No control group and no blinding at all The study authors themselves acknowledge the placebo effect although they naturally minimized the effect on the results.

loriverkutya 7y ago
Another miracle to "cure" autism from a completely useless study. It is also not considering any additional support the children got in that two years.
szbornak 7y ago
So, I'm not going to beat around the bush on this one, because just look at the nature of the disease and the premise of the treatment. Exactly how does the placebo effect work in this situation? What are the mechanics of the affliction, that we'd have to accept, to even make such a hypothesis of doubt in the treatment plausible? Both angles of observation get really strange, really fast, and I can only think of one possible truth that the reality of a placebo reveals. Autism is ostensibly a disease that exists no later than birth, as far as we know. Whatever it is, you won't be affected by any onset after childhood. If you get pst childhood without it, you don't acquire it later on. It doesn't manifest after a certain age. It affects deeply rooted aspects of social behavior, which don't disappear after they form. So, if the placebo effect cured it, then it has to mean those cured just weren't afflicted. Meanwhile, we're talking about eating shit. So, it has to mean that we have fakers pretending to be cured, and they change their odd habits after eating shit for multiple months. It also means that everyone was faking the cure. All of them, because it wasn't real from the start. It was an invented illness. If the gut flora treatment is invalidated by the placebo effect and patients cure themselves with a sugar pill just as readily as a shit pill, then we have fake patients eating shit, but also are back to square one, and the disease is as incurable as ever, plus lots of people are eating shit, and some were fakers and never autistic. So, by your theory, we have people trying to sell shit so that it gets fed to people with an incurable disease. That sobering reality would mean that the people pushing this cure have some hard looks coming their way.
ipunchghosts 7y ago
50% reduction, even if placebo, is really good! Is there a better placebo on the market currently?
- SpikeDad 7y ago
  If a placebo works as well as the trial treatment then you can conclude the trial treatment is ineffective. You can't conclude anything about the placebo. The definition of a placebo is a substance or treatment with no medical action. Well you could also conclude that you picked the wrong placebo since perhaps it's not an ineffective substance or treatment. This is the issue with acupuncture studies - turns out placebo treatments actually have an effect so you can't use the results of those studies in any substantive way. This autism could be working the same way - just the fact that someone is caring about your child can cause a ripple effect that improves the child's behavior or influences the parents and/or evaluators evaluation of the child's behavior.

loriverkutya 7y ago

Another miracle to "cure" autism from a completely useless study. It is also not considering any additional support the children got in that two years.

szbornak 7y ago

So, I'm not going to beat around the bush on this one, because just look at the nature of the disease and the premise of the treatment. Exactly how does the placebo effect work in this situation? What are the mechanics of the affliction, that we'd have to accept, to even make such a hypothesis of doubt in the treatment plausible? Both angles of observation get really strange, really fast, and I can only think of one possible truth that the reality of a placebo reveals. Autism is ostensibly a disease that exists no later than birth, as far as we know. Whatever it is, you won't be affected by any onset after childhood. If you get pst childhood without it, you don't acquire it later on. It doesn't manifest after a certain age. It affects deeply rooted aspects of social behavior, which don't disappear after they form. So, if the placebo effect cured it, then it has to mean those cured just weren't afflicted. Meanwhile, we're talking about eating shit. So, it has to mean that we have fakers pretending to be cured, and they change their odd habits after eating shit for multiple months. It also means that everyone was faking the cure. All of them, because it wasn't real from the start. It was an invented illness. If the gut flora treatment is invalidated by the placebo effect and patients cure themselves with a sugar pill just as readily as a shit pill, then we have fake patients eating shit, but also are back to square one, and the disease is as incurable as ever, plus lots of people are eating shit, and some were fakers and never autistic. So, by your theory, we have people trying to sell shit so that it gets fed to people with an incurable disease. That sobering reality would mean that the people pushing this cure have some hard looks coming their way.

ipunchghosts 7y ago

50% reduction, even if placebo, is really good! Is there a better placebo on the market currently?

SpikeDad 7y ago
If a placebo works as well as the trial treatment then you can conclude the trial treatment is ineffective. You can't conclude anything about the placebo. The definition of a placebo is a substance or treatment with no medical action. Well you could also conclude that you picked the wrong placebo since perhaps it's not an ineffective substance or treatment. This is the issue with acupuncture studies - turns out placebo treatments actually have an effect so you can't use the results of those studies in any substantive way. This autism could be working the same way - just the fact that someone is caring about your child can cause a ripple effect that improves the child's behavior or influences the parents and/or evaluators evaluation of the child's behavior.